The interior of this Mazda CX-9 Signature is impressive. Anyone who has seen it is wowed by how good it is. And by the fact that it’s made by Mazda and not by BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz, or Lexus. Let me illustrate why by walking you through the interior:
Let’s start with the drivers seat. It’s made of nappa leather and is comfortable to sit in once you dial in your position. Though if I could offer up a suggestion, a bit more thigh support for taller drivers would be welcome. It’s ten way adjustable with a pair of memory settings. The front seats are heated and cooled.
Door, window and and mirror controls are on the left and surrounded by some glossy piano black trim (which as you can see from this photo does attract fingerprints). In front of that are the buttons for the electronic overseers and the button for the rear hatch.
One nice touch is that the area near the handle is lit to add some ambiance.
Another nice touch is that the bottom of the door is wrapped around the bottom of the car so that when get in and out, your pants don’t get dirty.
The gauge cluster has a pair of analog gauges on the left and the right. But in the center is a massive TFT screen that allows you to customize it to display whatever info you need in front of you.
Speaking of in front of you, there’s a heads up display that projects speed, blind spot monitoring, cruise control, navigation and other info right onto the windshield. I will have more on this in part four of my review.
The steering wheel is leather wrapped and heated. It has buttons for the infotainment and cruise control systems. I must admit that it felt really nice in my hands.
A 8″ display sits on top of the dash. Plus it also gives you a great view of the Nappa leather and brushed aluminum that is all over this vehicle. Below the display are the HVAC controls.
Below the HVAC controls is the shift lever which is leather wrapped and surrounded by more piano black glossy trim. There’s also the HMI Commander Switch for the infotainment system and the electronic parking brake.
There’s a pair of cupholders that pass the Venti Starbucks drink test.
The armrest when opened has a pair of USB ports and a healthy amount of storage. It opens up in two halves which is kind of different. One thing that I should point out is that because the USB ports are here, I put my iPhone XS in here and left it there. Which meant I was less likely to try and use while driving.
You get a decent sized glove box on the passenger side.
My wife pointed this bit out. When you flip down the visor and slide the mirror open, the light that’s above it comes on. And when you flip up the visor, it turns off. She loved that clever feature.
Another thing that my wife noticed was the 12v outlet on the passenger side. That’s very handy.
One thing that I noticed was the fact that the rear view mirror is frameless. That gives you a lot more visibility when you have it properly positioned.
Now the sunroof that’s in the CX-9 was a topic for discussion as some felt that Mazda missed an opportunity to get a 10/10 on this vehicle by not having a panoramic sunroof in the vehicle. My response to that would be that by not having a panoramic sunroof, they make sure the vehicle stays stiff which makes it drive and handle better. And driving performance is a core reason why you buy a Mazda. Thus having a sunroof of this size makes total sense to me.
The second row can seat three kids. Maybe adults if they are friendly. The second row seats are heated for all except the person in the middle. And they slide back and forth to create more room for either those in the second row, or for those in the third row.
Those in the second row get access to their own set of HVAC controls.
If you don’t need to seat three people in the second row, you can flip down this armrest which not only has a pair of cupholders, but it has a storage area with a pair of USB ports in it.
Accessing the third row is straightforward. You pull a lever at the top of the second row seat (which split 60/40 by the way) flips down partially and the seat slides forward. Now adults will have a challenge sitting back here as headroom is limited. But kids should be fine.
There’s cupholders on either side of the third row.
Cargo room is not an issue. The third row folds flat and the second row folds mostly flat to give you lots of room (over 2000L of storage) for lots of cargo.
The CX-9 came in handy for me to pick up this TCL 43″ UHD TV that is up next to review in the coming days. I folded down all the seats to ensure that it would fit. But I think it might have fit even if I didn’t fold down the second row seats..
I also got this new TV stand and I only had to slide one of the second row seats forward to make it fit.
Shopping for groceries were a total non issue.
There is underfloor storage as well.
The cargo area has handy hooks like this one to secure your cargo.
Plus there’s a 12v outlet back here as well to power your gear.
Overall the interior is top shelf in every way possible. Mazda really did a great job putting the interior together as it it really impresses anyone who sees it. I should also note that there’s very good vision in every direction for the driver. Though I will note that when you have the third row seats up, the headrests cut off some of your rear vision. No rattles, squeaks, or other annoyances were noted during my week with the CX-9.
Tomorrow I will talk about the technology in the CX-9, including one major addition. Stay tuned for that.
Oh Noes! Seven New Meltdown And Spectre Style CPU Attacks Found!
Posted in Commentary with tags AMD, ARM, Intel on November 14, 2018 by itnerdA team of nine academics has revealed today seven new CPU attacks. The seven impact AMD, ARM, and Intel CPUs to various degrees:
Two of the seven new attacks are variations of the Meltdown attack, while the other five are variations on the original Spectre attack — two well-known attacks that have been revealed at the start of the year and found to impact CPUs models going back to 1995. Researchers say they’ve discovered the seven new CPU attacks while performing “a sound and extensible systematization of transient execution attacks” — a catch-all term the research team used to describe attacks on the various internal mechanisms that a CPU uses to process data, such as the speculative execution process, the CPU’s internal caches, and other internal execution stages. The research team says they’ve successfully demonstrated all seven attacks with proof-of-concept code. Experiments to confirm six other Meltdown-attacks did not succeed, according to a graph published by researchers.
Well. This isn’t good. It’s a safe bet that people at ARM, AMD, and Intel are scrambling to verify if these attacks are fixable and how fast they can get those fixes out to the public.
Fun times….
Leave a comment »